If you host WordPress yourself, two caching approaches dominate the conversation: LiteSpeed Cache running on OpenLiteSpeed, and Nginx with FastCGI cache in front of PHP-FPM. Both can serve a cached page in well under fifty milliseconds, so the interesting differences are not in raw speed but in how much work it takes to run them well.
The LiteSpeed combination wins on integration. Because the cache lives inside the server and the plugin talks to it directly, cache purging is intelligent: publish a post and only the affected pages are invalidated. Object caching, image optimisation, and critical CSS are all configured from the same plugin, which is a real advantage if you would rather not assemble a stack by hand.
Integration vs. Control
Nginx FastCGI cache wins on transparency and ubiquity. There is no plugin coupling and no licensing question, just a well-understood configuration that has run half the internet for a decade. The trade-off is that purging is blunter, you typically clear the whole cache or rely on a helper plugin, and you assemble object caching and the rest yourself.
Our verdict: if you want the most performance for the least configuration, OpenLiteSpeed with LiteSpeed Cache is hard to beat. If you value a vendor-neutral stack you fully control and you are comfortable on the command line, Nginx FastCGI remains an excellent, boring, dependable choice. There is no wrong answer here, only the one that matches how much you enjoy tuning servers.
